


Anyway, I Hate Divorces

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: A Letter In Your Writing Doesn't Mean You're Not Dead [7]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alcohol, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, M/M, don't do drugs, naughty bad magic, philosophical exercise disguised as a simple story about a break up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 21:46:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2404037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the beginning of the new age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anyway, I Hate Divorces

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary come from The New Age, by the Velvet Underground. I am not involved in the creation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and this school is not involved in the creation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

The first thing to go is his hair. When Deirdre sees, she makes the pathetic face that he's only seen once before- when they sat with her elderly cat as it died- and he wants to slap her and to her embrace her, both, but he simply breezes, It had to go, darling.  
“But darling,” she says, “your lovely hair. You were so beautiful.”  
“And I'm not, now?” he replies glacially, hooding his eyes and turning his head to show his profile.  
“Of course you are, but-” she frowns, as she's been doing so much, lately, “but you look so hard. You look like-”  
“Like someone who's had their heart broken?”  
“Well, I was going to say like a prison matron, but now that you mention it-”  
“Oh, please,” he says, waving a hand. “It makes me look like Bowie- don't you think?”  
She tries to smile. “I suppose.”  
“I'm still gorgeous, and you know it.”  
“Of course, darling.”  
“Now, are we going out, or do I have to stay home and fuck myself?”

He's twenty-four. As good as divorced. He doesn't have to hear it from others to know that he's damaged goods. But ask him if he cares. Deirdre's friend tonight is strictly for the girls, but there are others. He leaves Deirdre and what's-her-name dancing and laughing, glued to the spot on the dance floor, handbags nested at their feet, and he goes to the bar.  
“Vodka, tonic,” he says blandly, and the drink comes right to his hand, a cold kiss on the palm. He drinks deeply, tonguing the ice cubes, then slides the glass back across the bar. More.  
“More.”  
“Coming up.”  
Another drink, and this one sinks in. Bites him warm and gentle, and drops all the way down to his toes. Yes. There are so many more. If this one isn't interested, another one will be. Luscious, ebullient women, happy in the night, silver chains of sweat between their soft, fragrant breasts. Hard, taut men, trying desperately to look cool, but losing it all the second a pretty face appears. Even his pretty face.  
He ends up with a couple, Maggie and Tony, pressing together in the toilet, ABBA playing so hard that it coats the place like wallpaper.  
“What if someone sees?” Maggie thrills, tipping her head back. No one will bother them, Ethan assures her. He hums the chorus of Waterloo into her cleavage as he undoes her top. Tony is nowhere and everywhere, content to watch, apparently. Ethan sneaks a look at him while he's rubbing Maggie off, and sees him pressed as closely against the wall as he can get, practically becoming the masonry. Well, fuck him, if he can't have a good time. “I feel like I win when I lose,” Ethan whispers into Maggie's ear as she comes against his hand, one leg wrapped around him, two fingers in her mouth.

The next things that must go are the books. These, he cannot destroy, so he gives them to Deirdre, even though she knows them almost as well as he does, having been the one to discover them with him. Long before he ever showed them to- anyone else. For a moment, he thought to offer them to Thomas and Philip, a little bit of charity, to show that they were not forgotten. Deirdre tells him, though, that they're incommunicado, holed up in a room, somewhere, talking only to her, and only when she insists. “Into the hard stuff,” she says.  
“What- drugs, or magic?”  
“Drugs, Ethan,” she snaps and rolls her eyes, “Some of us have learnt our lesson.”  
“Oh, and what lesson was that, darling?”  
“That, darling, if you escape being burnt once, you should just stay away from the flame.”  
“But did we escape? Were we truly not burnt?”  
“Leave it alone,” her voice is hard, then softens, “I know he hurt you, but-” she frowns, “But you need to find a way to go on. You need to find a way to live a normal life. Now, if these are really mine to take,” she gestures to the books, “I'm going to dispose of them. I'm trying to get myself together. Please try to do the same. I love you, Ethan.”  
He thinks it's the end, but it's just one of her still uncharacteristic but increasingly frequent fits of melancholy. Later that day, she calls him, begs his forgiveness for acting like an old nag, and that night, she takes him out for drinks. Dawn sees them crashing through his door, arms wrapped around each other, laughing for the sheer joy of laughing. Everything is good and whole- nothing broken, and for forty-eight solid hours, Ethan forgets that Rupert Giles ever existed.  
He's mending, he's sure. He must be. It's 1976, and he's twenty-five, which isn't young, but it's not exactly ancient, either. This is the right kind of time: he's able to savor the moments, now, as he couldn't when he was young and still waiting. Waiting for something, anything. The days pass with pleasing alacrity, so he finds that he hasn't even time to get bored. Finally, things interest him as much as he's always wanted them to. Some nights, to his pleasant surprise, he actually falls asleep reading. There are more early nights, but still nights for Deirdre, and starting one surprising night later in the year, for Philip and Thomas. They're a magic circle again. Like an antique diadem: a little battered, but still able to shine.

It's 1977, and life is returning to normal. He's even letting his hair grow a little bit. Among the younger people, the fashion is shifting toward shorter hair. Tighter trousers. Shirts that are either torn to shreds or buttoned to the neck. It's dreary and pointlessly spiteful, he thinks, like the music that's also becoming fashionable. In his aging soul, he longs for glitter rock. For Bolan and Bowie and the New York Dolls. The color seems to have drained from the world. He wouldn't mind so much if it were an achromatic vision with romance- Louise Brooks and Conrad Veidt- but it's industrial, cleanly extruded and adamant, and the promise of sex that it carries is just the notion of endless pistoning, hateful and metallic. The only danger is overheating or contracting tetanus.  
He goes with Deirdre to punk shows, hoping to have his mind changed, but it never happens. All of the boys remind him of Ripper. Not of what Ripper was, of course, but of what he wanted so desperately to be. Though, even they must be faking it. No one could be so thoroughly against absolutely everything. Not even a teenager. There's nowhere left to go after that.  
Deirdre is on the dance floor, jumping up and down next to a short-haired person of indeterminate gender. Ethan tries to wave to her, but she doesn't see. He looks at his watch. His drink tastes like rubbing alcohol. Ten more minutes, and he'll step outside.  
By virtue of his incredible patience, he lasts half of the set, and then goes out for a fag. The street is mercifully quiet; velvety where it's dark, and electric where it's lit. After a bit, Deirdre joins him.  
“Don't you like it?” she huffs. Since he's begun to let his hair get longer, she's decided to cut hers off. For a while, she had it platinum blonde, but now that it's back to its natural red, she looks like a female John Lydon. Ethan won't tell her that, though; it'd please her too much.  
“Oh, Deirdre, you know it isn't me.”  
“Well, why not?” she laughs.  
“It's so dreary. And what does it even mean? They all hate everything so much, but they don't offer any alternatives.”  
“They're children- they wouldn't know how to. Isn't the energy great, though?”  
He makes a face. “Well, there's a lot of it, certainly, but it's unfocused. Nothing will come of it. And like you say, they're children- in a few months, they'll be onto something else. This is all disposable. Nothing lasts anymore.”  
“You're still upset about Roxy Music breaking up.”  
“Whyever for? It's not as though any of them went anywhere.”  
She rolls her eyes. “What do you want to do, now?”  
“Can we go someplace where there are adults?”  
“Well, why don't we just go back to yours, listen to the wireless and soak our false teeth?”  
“Only if we can soak them in vodka.”  
She laughs and takes his arm. Life might be changing, but he's very sure, then, that he'll always be like this, that this is the end of him. Whatever else happens will happen around him, but never touch him. Nothing will ever touch him again.

It's 1979. He's learning to like punk rock. It only took him four years. Perhaps to reward him for his new perspective, Roxy Music got back together. That's what Deirdre says, laughing and poking him teasingly. The magic circle has admitted a new member, if only for the night. Deirdre's brought a friend, a woman whose name is Alice, or Alison- Ethan isn't sure. When they were introduced, Ethan was already drunk, and he's been getting progressively drunker. He's gotten into the practice of doing a little improvised divination every morning, making an omen of the first thing he sees when he steps outside, and today, there was a pair of broken glasses on the threshold, cracked almost to pieces, but neatly folded. From somewhere he couldn't identify came a strange pain, and then a nausea that lingered into the midday. But then, Deirdre'd called and asked him to come out, and he'd felt so much better. That good feeling had carried him through most of the day, but then, night came, and walking to meet his friends, he'd felt so peculiarly and so horribly alone.  
Thomas and Philip are creeping into middle age. Usually, it's the other way around, people getting old like something sneaking up on them that they aren't aware of until it yells Boo. Thomas and Philip are quietly coming for the passage of time- but will it be ready for them?  
What a whimsical thought. He laughs to himself. Is time ever unready for things to happen? Or is it just human beings who get nasty surprises?  
“Are you getting moody, darling?” Deirdre asks.  
“Hmm? No. I'm just-”  
“I was just telling Alice that you have a friend in common.”  
“Oh?” he raises his eyebrows. He regards Alice. She's young, though how young, he can't tell. Not yet twenty-five, probably. “Who's that, darling?”  
“Rupert Giles?” says Alice.  
He hadn't noticed before, but his hands are very cold. “I'm sure I don't know who that is.”  
“You needn't be coy,” Deirdre snorts, “Alice is in the know. About us. About everything. Her mother and father work for the Council.”  
“Only in a very limited capacity,” Alice says softly. Ethan feels a great swell of sympathy for her, poor child, here among all of these loud, strange people, not much older than her, surely, but at that age, even a few years makes a big difference.  
“Alice, dear,” he murmurs, “didn't you have a purse? I think you might have left it behind when you visited the loo.”  
“Oh, dear,” she says, and gets up, her bag swinging from her shoulder.  
Watching with an unreadable expression, Deirdre waits until Alice has left the table before speaking. “What was that?”  
It takes him a moment, but when he finds his voice, he knows the words are wrong before he says them. He can't stop himself, though. “How dare you? How dare you tell a complete stranger about that?”  
Deirdre laughs. “I didn't know it was a secret! Anyway, I don't know why you'd want to keep it to yourself. If I'd fucked a Watcher, I'd tell everyone I met. You could dine out for years on a story like that.”  
“It's not a story.”  
“It's, what, the love of your life?” she sneers.  
“Stop it.”  
She shakes her head. “You're not doing yourself any favors, turning it into a big tragedy.”  
“Randall died.”  
“That was terrible, but we're not talking about Randall. We're talking about your fling with some little slut who got in over his head and made us pay for it. How could you still love somebody like that?”  
“I don't-”  
“So, preserving his memory like you're in mourning is just for fun?”  
“I think I should leave.”  
“You can do what you like,” Deirdre shrugs, “No one could ever stop you from doing what you wanted.”  
He could stay or he could go. It's his decision. If he stays, there'll be a horrible row. Alice will probably never talk to any of them again, and Deirdre will be angry at him for chasing away her girlfriend. Thomas is at the bar, and Philip is making a big show of having dropped his lighter under the table. But Ethan's already standing, and he doesn't have the energy to shout, or speak, or even to think that much. He hardly notices himself moving, away from the table, and out of the front door, and into the street.

He won't see her again for another seven years. It'll be Christmas, then, which can make people soft. He'll try for several fruitless hours to put himself in a trance, to follow her energy signature to her location. He's too hungover and too worn-out, and the cocaine he takes to sharpen himself up just makes him feel like he's in fifty places at once. Finally, he'll look her up in the phonebook, call the number he finds, get an ansaphone. He'll call a cab, and ride, nose dripping and hands shaking to her address, where a frowning doorman will grudgingly tell him that she's at a do. That, he can have for free. Where it's being held costs him ten pounds. He's feeling so rough that he gives the doorman a real note. The cab has been waiting, on the promise of a large tip. Ethan gives the driver twenty pounds, and the address of the hotel where the event is.  
He doesn't remember going into the hotel. Everything begins when he sees her. Her hair is still short, in an asymmetrical style that makes her look beautiful and terrifying. Her face is more worn than he remembered, but kinder. The dinner is in relation to an AIDS charity, with which she's involved in some capacity. Against his will, he gasps when he sees, older but unmistakably her, Alice sitting next to Deirdre. But how can he remember what she looks like, a woman he met once, nearly a decade earlier, when he was drunk? It must be magic. He could say something. He could apologize. Beg Deirdre to apologize to him. Tell her that he's thought about doing this so many times, but he's never been able to bring himself to. Tell her that he no longer hates her, that he misses her. That what she said was unforgivable, but he doesn't care anymore. It occurs to him that he never told the cab driver to leave, that the man is still waiting. Ethan says, Oh, shit, and runs out of the hotel.

But does he ever try to find Rupert?  
No.  
He's too ashamed. Of himself. Of Rupert. Of being so stupid. Of what they, together, did. For Randall's sake, he makes himself feel shame. For the first time in his life. It grows, it spreads around him, forming an envelope for him to hide in from the world. No one can ever know what he did. This becomes: no one could ever know what he did. It was a terrible thing, but it was an extraordinary thing. As one by one, things he loves keep leaving his life, it's the one that he clings to. It's cost him so, so much, but he changed the world. May they all forgive him.  
Yes.  
A thousand times. If only in dreams. Though, it must be a dream, because the logic of dreams is in place. Wherever he seeks Rupert, Rupert has just left. By the time Ethan scrapes up the courage or the anger or the desire or the desperation to make the journey to Oxford, Rupert has just left. It was a matter of weeks, and the people to whom Ethan speaks assert that in great likelihood, Rupert is still in town, staying with his family. Where might the ancestral manse be? This, not a soul knows. Ethan locates all of the likely homes in the area, and watches each one long enough to reject it as a possibility. It takes him weeks, but he finds it. It's 1980, and his heart undulates and aches in his chest as he walks up the back of a great gravel serpent to its mouth of metal and stone and wood. The door is answered by what must be some servant, who when asked for Rupert, shakes his head and says that since Giles, senior died two months earlier, all the others had departed, to parts unknown. “I only opened the door because I thought you might be from the estate agent,” the man sneers. Before the man can close the door, Ethan turns his back and mutters something. Behind him, inside of the house, there is a tremendous crash, and the man swears once, loudly, before slamming the door closed.

His childhood was a waste of time. It could hardly have been anything else; that's what it was made to be. Nothing of any worth was given to children. His adolescence was similarly dismal. He learned what he could, understanding that it would be an eternity before he could use it. His twenties, he wasted all on his own. Nothing there was of very much importance. Nothing much. His thirties were a pleasant respite- no more fretting and toiling. He was resigned to his own uselessness. It was his reward. If most writers only have one novel in them, most people have only one great work of any kind in them. He did his. For good or ill. Let the universe sort it out- he'd drink a bottle of wine and fall asleep in the bath.  
At the dawn of his forties, though, he begins to understand things differently. Maybe nothing touches or changes him, but he touches everything and changes everything he touches. He considers a very minor event in his life, and traces it through its trajectory to the present day. Just a small thing can shape a person's entire life. It's fairly intuitive, but a person could go mad really thinking about it. He begins to use it as a way to meditate, and finds that it lends him a perspective he could have never imagined. He's at the center of everything. All of creation is a heart that beats just for him, for he's the blood it circulates. It's not chaos. It was never chaos. It's a kind of order most people aren't prepared to see, because they're woven into it. He's woven himself out, and now, he can see everything. He takes a handful of amphetamines and stays up for three days. By the time he comes down, he's sure that he can see it all. He knows exactly what will become of him, for every second of the rest of his life. He runs to the bathroom and vomits, pours half a bottle of gin into his empty stomach, collapses and sleeps for two days. When he awakes, he remembers nothing but a dream about fire.  
After leaving an offering of bile for the porcelain god, meditating a respectable period, and having some civilizing toast and tea, he quenches his flaming head on the ocean-cool night. There's a place he's been going to, for the past couple of months. It's a dark, cozy little place, full of frowning twenty-year-old's, listening to what became of punk rock. It's sad, but it's also his romantic monochromatic vision, finally. _Pandora's Box_ and _Caligari_ , finally. At first, they regarded him with suspicion, which he deserves, for being old, but now that they know that he's just there to drink his booze and sometimes buy pills off of them, he's like a piece of furniture.  
But this. This doesn't belong here. As soon as Ethan walks in, he feels it. Instead of fear, he experiences a strange kind of delight. He smiles. He can't remember the last time he was this close to a vampire. Whatever else they might be, they're still proof that there's magic in the world. He looks around, but it's difficult to tell by sight. He closes his eyes, opens them. It has to be that peroxided tart at the end of the bar. The second he thinks it, the vampire's eyes meet his; Ethan must have been looking too long. There's nothing else for it. Ethan goes over and sits down.  
“Are you sure this is quite the best place to make your living?” Ethan asks, looking at the vampire and gesturing to the bartender. A vodka and tonic appears before him. He drinks.  
The vampire raises his eyebrows. “Are you a copper?”  
“Not even remotely. That's not what I mean by 'living', anyway. Though, it your case, it's a slight misnomer.”  
The vampire laughs. “You're never a Watcher!”  
“Isn't it obvious? I'm a Slayer.”  
The vampire has to steady himself against the bar. “Warn a fellow when you're going to do that.” He's actually holding his sides. He clears his throat. “Well, what about you- fancy a little trip to heaven?”  
“I don't fuck vampires,” Ethan replies primly, “It's a good way to get needlessly perforated.”  
The vampire shrugs. “For my taste, you're a bit long in the tooth, anyway.”  
“That's so witty,” Ethan yawns, “Now, while I don't have anything against you, I like it here, and it would be very inconvenient for me if people suddenly started dying at my favorite bar. So, why don't you leave, before I turn you into something unpleasant. More unpleasant.”  
The vampire regards him. “Do you know who I am?”  
“No. But I do know that you're here all by yourself, and there's only so much one vampire can do. I, on the other hand, can do a lot all on my own.”  
The vampire sniffs derisively. “You smell like death. I'll remember you.”  
The words are heavy in his mouth, to blot out the fire of memory. “No, you won't.” Ethan smiles a little. If he could see himself, would he think that it's a sad smile? It's a special kind of cruelty to deny a creature its own history. Even a creature like this.  
The vampire's expression changes. For a moment, his face is blank- the repose of slumber- but then he shakes it off, looks stricken, as though he's just remembered that he left the stove on. When he leaves, it's almost at a run.  
The bartender looks up, starts to say something about leaving without paying the bill, and Ethan pushes some money across the bar. Ethan shakes his head. “It's not worth it. I assure you.”

But if a human being's sense of smell is tremendously evocative of the past, imagine how it must be for a vampire, for whom it's so much stronger and who might have so much more past. There's something about this man disguised a Rupert Giles. It's the scent coming from him, underneath the cologne and cigarettes and alcohol and sweat, muted but true. It's death. Old death, centuries of it. Ashes and bones. A funeral pyre, and a hole in the ground. It's comforting. It's like coming home. Spike presses his face to back of Ethan's neck and inhales. He thinks of London. He thinks of the long black tongue of winter night. He thinks about young bodies in dark rooms, dancing and sweating in the press of music.  
“Aside from the obvious,” Spike asks, “do I know you from somewhere?”  
Ethan makes a sound that could be a laugh. “I don't think so.”  
“Are you sure?”  
Ethan makes a sound that's definitely a laugh. “Maybe in another life.”


End file.
